


ivory

by asiren (meliorismo)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 10:38:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18915253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/pseuds/asiren
Summary: Margaery is young, and pretty, and funny, and also haunting Sansa.





	ivory

**Author's Note:**

> i gave up on this tv show like four years ago, and i wrote this using only the vague knowledge i got for exposure about this last season. still, i regret nothing.  
> also, this work is a little more melancholic than the summary probably makes it look like.

“Do you remember”, Sansa muttered, “King’s Landing?”

“It’s funny how you think I could ever forget… Wasn’t there that I died?” 

Margaery’s ghost shook her legs, one and then the other, from where she was sitting. Sansa had to look up to talk to her; it was probably by Margaery’s design, rather than some inane coincidence. If Sansa didn’t already knew she was going crazy, then the ghost of her former best friend slash kind of ex lover just showing up to haunt her would probably do the trick. 

“I miss your hair.”

“What do you mean? It’s still in my head.” 

“It used to be…” she waved her hands, as if to say  _ I can’t explain exactly to you but I’m really right while you’re really wrong and, what’s worst, playing dumb.  _ Margaery Tyrell, well. She was an expert in things like this. Talking a lot using her body, and being charming on top of that. “I don’t know. Red-er? Also, you always styled it differently.” 

“You’ve been… away, for a long time. I’ve been using it like this since forever.”

“You can say dead.” Margaery nodded, magnamously. “It’s what happened to me, after all. I died. Was executed, if we want to enter technicalities.” 

“We don’t.” 

“Did you miss me when I was gone?” 

“You talk as if you’re planning to stay.” Sansa answered her, sounding wary. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Someone listening to you, they would think you want me gone.” Margaery pressed her lips, looking sad and disapproving and amused at the exact same time. Sansa was, suddenly, back at King’s Landing, looking down from the high gardens, watching maidens and servants running errands for their masters, being closely watched by angry-looking knights. 

It wasn’t a good memory, and it seemed to be the only thing that Margaery could remember her of. 

She wasn’t translucent. She also wasn’t gray, or blue, or green. Nothing in the world prepared Sansa to the sight of a Margaery who looked like she had just been sleeping all this time, waiting for the mess to be over. If it were the truth, then she’d have a terrible timing; the civil war was over, and the White Walkers were so-so, but the North was starving. 

She didn’t really know what to do. Some days she still woke up crying. 

Maybe it was their ghosts — the people she knew, the people she loved, all the ones who betrayed her and whose she betrayed right back — that guided Margaery to her side. Like a parody of the time when she was naive, and desperate, and alone, and had on this self made queen the only friendly face, the only friendly touch. 

Sansa missed her, longed for her. Not just directly after Margaery’s death, or in the cold and alone nights after that, or even during the siege, the dragons, the white. She missed Margaery even with her at her side, just like she did when they were children, when touching her and smelling her and  _ carving her, owning her  _ hadn’t been enough. 

But now — everything was wrong; subtle, terrible wrong; like familiar pieces mixed all out of place. Margaery was still dead, and Sansa was going crazy. 

And, still, Sansa was happy. 

Just like when she would hide in Margaery’s bed, giggling against her hand while Margaery would hurriedly send the servants away, standing between them and the door that would reveal Sansa naked, curled form. She had been happy, then. Even among everything else. 

“What are you thinking about?” Margaery asked, and Sansa went back to looking at her. She was resting her face on her hand, the locks of brown hair falling like curtains, touching her cheeks and her neck and her shoulders, all those places that used to be so familiar to Sansa like her own reflection on the mirror. Before her death, Margaery’s expressions used to be more… closed, somehow, like she were miles and miles away, and couldn’t be bothered to stay in one place long enough to care. But being dead softened Margaery — her face, her temper, her smile. 

Sansa ached for her. The woman she knew would strike this new one across the face, condemning what she would call a “terrible weakness”. Sansa understood that as a fact, since she once saw Margaery slap a lady in waiting because she cried when someone was mean to her. The poor girl didn’t learn anything by it, and two days later was crying again. Margaery dragged by the hair and locked her in a bedroom without water for two days. 

But it was  _ before.  _ Sansa supposed that in the after world there was no throne to fight over. 

Funny, that. There wasn’t one between the living either. 

“I’m just remembering.” Sansa answered her, after a while. 

“Well, aren’t we soft this morning? You shouldn't look too much at the past, Lady Sansa. It can come back to haunt you.” 

“Like you’re doing now?”

She laughed, and it sounded like the first drops of rain after a terrible hot morning, and all the kind of things that Sansa didn’t knew the meaning of since she left her past life. “Precisely.”

“I’m convinced that I’m going insane.”

“Why? Don’t you have a brother who talks to a crow, raven, who knows what?”

“It’s different.” Sansa lied, defensively.

“How?” Margaery rose one of her pretty eyebrows. 

(Sansa hated her. Even her eyelashes were beautiful).

“That serves a purpose.” 

“And this don’t?” and, of course, she laughed again. Yes. Margaery wasn’t  _ ever _ known for her ability to take things seriously. 

“Driving me into an early grave, no, I don’t think so.”

Her mouth was still red, like she were just eating pomegranates. She used to do that a lot in those early days, when she was still set on pushing Sansa into the deep well of insanity — confused, wanting, lost, alone. No one had ever explained anything like  _ boys  _ to her, less of all  _ girls.  _

And Margaery thought it all very funny. So she would eat pomegranates all day long. 

“I hope you’re at least remembering the good things. Weren’t we happy, once?” she shook her legs one, two, three and then jumped, landing safely on the ground like they were still running between the apple trees, climbing and hiding and laughing in their small little bubble, away from everything else. She smiled, sunnily, and Sansa  _ ached.  _

(She didn’t know how to want things anymore. Her skin was steel, and Margaery was made to be touched by fine, quiet things; by hands that were delicate like porcelain). 

She belonged in the past. And no matter what Sansa wanted, she couldn’t drag Margaery back to life. 

“I’ll leave soon.” Margaery told her, like she could listen to her thoughts. Funny, that. Margaery could read her like a book when she was alive, even away from their sheets; even outside of her quiet sphere of influence. But it was all done and gone, and no one could grasp her anymore. When Margaery left again, it would be finally over forever. 

People didn’t get close to Sansa. Not anymore. 

(Everyone she loved was dead, or dying, or so far away that it was like they were in another planet entirely). 

“I will come back next year.” Margaery muttered, and kissed the air close to Sansa’s cheeks when the silence lasted too long. “And the year after that.” 

“Why?”

(Dared Sansa —  _ feel things?) _

“You’re much too alone, Lady Sansa.” she smiled. “And I am too. Death is boring, let me tell you that. Please stay alive as long as possible, because then what will rest us if not being bored together?”

“What if”, Sansa started, and it sounded weak to her own ears. Still, she was a Stark, and her family wasn’t made of quitters, so she soldiered on. “I don’t want to be with you?” 

“Oh!” Margaery laughed. It was like watching puppies. Sansa hated her. “But you missed me so much! That’s why I’m here! Tell me, Sansa. When was the last time you left someone as much as touch your hand? Talk to you without five pounds of titles and formalities?”

“Shut up. Go away.”

Margaery sighed. “My time here is as good as done anyway. Well, there’s away next year. Maybe then you’ll be more… Easy to handle.”

Sansa glared at her very viciously. Margaery giggled. 

“Goodbye, my love.” she said, and raised her hand as if going to touch Sansa’s face, before sighing. “Silly me. I’ll have to save that for when you die too.”

“Will you really be back?” Sansa asked, sounding small. Margaery looked at her very sadly, the same way she would do sometimes when they were young and she knew that Cersei would do something that would crush Sansa’s soul. 

“I will. Next year. Don’t miss me too badly. And please, talk to someone.”

Sansa laughed a little, and wished very hard that she could just kiss her, because words were difficult when your skin is made of ivory, and even worse when it becomes steel. “Next year, I will wear my hair like I used to. If you want.”

Margaery grinned, painfully  _ young _ , like she would stay even as Sansa went on to grow old and sick and ugly, and disappeared, as if she were never there in the first place. 

 

At all. 


End file.
